


A Study in Paint

by comewhatmay



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Canon Rewrite, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 05:56:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2298944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comewhatmay/pseuds/comewhatmay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate Meeting AU. Loosely inspired by <a href="http://coffeeclint.tumblr.com/post/86383841440/spilled-paint-on-them-in-the-art-store-au-trying">this prompt post</a>: "spilled paint on them in the art store au".</p><p>John just wants to buy some paint to make his grey bedsit a little less grey. The Sherlock Holmes Technicolor Effect may be more than he bargained for... but at least he's never bored.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Paint

John sits up in his bed after yet another nightmare - of comrades getting blown to pieces, the deafening thunder of warfare, the excruciating pain of your bones and sinew shattering under the ruthless force of a bullet - and he has had enough.

He stares around him, heart still racing in his chest and panicked breaths catching in his throat, and hates everything about _everything_ in this dreary little bedsit that is now home.

It's just so grey.

The walls, the bed, the sheets, the carpet, even the pale London light filtering in through the measly window - it's all so _grey_ that John wants to scream. Wants to take his illegal gun and shoot himself, just to see a final splash of vivid blood red against the walls before he fades entirely into the colourless monotony around him...

But he really mustn't be thinking like that.

He gets up and moves to the only table in the flat, firing up his laptop before walking to the kitchenette to flick the kettle on.  

He could probably afford less dreary accomodations, if he went to the countryside. If he took himself off to some tiny village where the whole population could fit inside one church hall and the baker knows every customer by name. He could get himself a nice house and establish his own practise there, spend his days treating endless cases of common cold and colicky babies.

John waits for the water to boil, listening to the sounds of London waking to full weekday bustle around him - and that's just it.

He can't leave London. He can't make himself leave the breathtaking pace of life that exists all around him here, a place where there is always the shrill siren of an ambulance somewhere, the hurried strides of thousands of people going about their business every day, a dizzying array of humanity in all its glory and tragedy in every corner.

A place that is a battlefield in its own way, one that is as alien to John the ex-Soldier now as Afghanistan once was. He can't possibly leave London for the quiet contentment of the country. The silence alone would kill him. 

Here at least he can sense the underbelly of the life pulsing around him, even if it all feels apart from him, out of his reach. Here at least he can hope that someday he will find a new purpose amidst the bustling crowds and concrete towers.

The kettle boils and John sets about making his morning cuppa, then brings the mug and a plate of biscuits over to the tiny table.

He navigates to his e-mail inbox while sipping hot tea, scrolling through the new ones - deleting promotional junk and flagging important bills for later perusal. He can't think about his dwindling finances and the barely sufficient army pension right now.

His eyes catch on a mail from Clara and he clicks into the conversation, nibbling on a biscuit.

He and Clara have kept somewhat in touch despite the disastrous way her marriage with Harry ended. Right from the start, they always found a cordial accomplice in each other to support against the raging maelstrom that is Harry and when Clara told him she didn't want to lose his friendship amidst the divorce, John agreed. 

She doesn't say much in the body of the mail, just some generic questions about how he's keeping and asking if they could meet up sometime next week. There's also a link in the postscript which Clara has supplemented with "I know it sounds silly and superficial, but I did some of the suggested re-decorating and it really did help me feel better in the new flat. Try it, John."

The link leads to a blog article titled 'Decorating tips to fill your home with positive energy!'

John tries not to make a face. 

He gives in and clicks on the link, because what the hell. He is a thiry-five year old ex-soldier sitting alone in a closet-sized bedsit after waking up from nightmares about being shot in the war. Reading an inane article about flat re-decoration is hardly going to sink his life lower than it already is. Maybe he'll even try out one of the tips. It's not like there'll be anyone else around to see it.

He stares at the list of gratingly enthusiastic subtitles, flicking through for something cheap he could do to make his awful bedsit a teensy bit less awful.

'Feng-shui compliant decorations'.

He barely has the money to pay his bills and buy groceries. The last thing he can afford is splurging on a Laughing Buddha statue.

'Switch up and re-decorate your furniture.'

The reason his furniture is arranged the way it is is because no other arrangement _would_ work to fit everything into the cramped space of his bedsit. He doubts re-arranging and the resultant constant stubbing of toes will help to 'improve his chi'.

'Air Quality'.

He guesses he can buy one of those fragrant air plug-ins and let it run for a while every day. Though honestly, smelling that artificial flowery pine scent would probably just make him think of public waiting lounges and hotel rooms.

'Paint the walls a new colour'.

Ah. That has a little promise. 

John looks at the chart listing the basic primary colours and the 'positive energy feelings' they apparently inspire when painted on your walls.

 _Pink/Red - Inspires feelings of romance and passion._ (Yeah this bedsit won't be seeing that kind of positive energy feelings anytime soon. Besides, the red would just bring back unwelcome thoughts of blood and how the splatter patterns would blend with the walls...)

 _Blue/Violet - In moderation, inspires peace and serenity._ (Just sounds like it'll send him into greater depression really.) 

 _Orange/Yellow - Inspires warmth, enthusiasm and joy._ (That's a better candidate though yellow always seemed a sickly colour to him.)

 _Green - Inspires a sense of healing and an aura of nurturing._  

Hmm. Healing and nurturing.

His hand lifts unconsciously to brush at his left shoulder, where the upraised mess of scar tissue can be felt through his thin night clothes. He could do with some healing and nurturing. And a splash of new colour would maybe make this place feel a little more like home.

So that's decided then. John nods to himself and powers off his laptop, getting up to dress for a trip to the store. 

Looks like he will be painting his walls green today.

*

In the future (depending on the day and the ratio of edible food to human body parts in the fridge), John will curse or give thanks to whichever deity nudged him to enter the hipstery paint shop a few blocks down from his bedsit, instead of being sensible and walking on to the Tesco further down the street.

He can never quite tell what made him walk into the cheery looking place, with its hand-painted signboards and multi-hued walls splashed with every colour under the sun. Probably the frankly alarming levels of 'positive energy feelings' that the place was sending out. John figured just absorbing one percent would have buoyed him up for days.

So there he is now, limping down the haphazardly arranged aisles of the store, heading towards a neatly stacked pile of green paint cans of varying hues. 

He looks through the selections offered, frowning at one shade of green versus another, trying to figure out the difference between 'Pistachio', 'Mantis' and 'Asparagus' (because frankly, they all look the same to him).

He finally settles on a shade that looks like it'd be pleasant to see every day and lifts up the can, maneuvering it into his hands around the bloody cane he loathes, but needs to walk. 

The shop owner flutters up to his side with excellent timing, all cheerful smiles, clacking necklace beads and giant pink lotus pinned to the side of her hairbun. She offers him the use of a white canvas propped up against a corner wall, in case he'd like to paint out the shade and see if the colour "truly embraces his psyche".

Before John can make any noise of agreement or refusal, she shuttles him towards the canvas board, handing him a cup of his chosen green paint and a paint brush, before disappearing to attend to another customer who has just come in.

John stares after her lotus-clad head in bemused wonder, then turns to the blank canvas in front of him. And he figures, why not. Might as well splash around the paint a little. See if it inspires any bloody positive feelings of healing and nurturing in him.

He props up his cane against the wall and is just lifting a brushful of green paint towards the canvas when, out of nowhere, a heavy warm body crashes forcefully into his back, sending him stumbling forward on his compromised centre of gravity.

John barely manages to hold on to the cup of paint in his hand, but the loaded paint brush he was lifting is a lost cause. It slips through his startled fingers and goes clattering to the ground, spraying the wooden floor, his trousers and his sensible brown army shoes with 'Forest Green' spatters of paint.

John stares at his ruined shoes in dismay and whirls around, an angry tirade ready on his lips to unleash on whichever idiot shoved against him like that - but it dies without an utterance, because _whoa_.

The man in front of him looks like he walked straight off a Savile Row ad. He is slender and tall, with perfect pale skin and a headful of glossy black curls that look artfully tousled in a way John's could never achieve, even with the help of ten hairdressers. He's wearing a well-tailored suit and an open Belstaff coat which, paired with a deep blue scarf and those _cheekbones_ , overall cut a dashing figure of posh mysteriousness. 

While John tries to wrap his head around this strangely Byronic apparition in front of him, said apparition is staring at the floor, striking silver green eyes taking in the splotches of paint all around John, muttering to himself in a continuous baritone rumble.

"Exactly as I thought," the posh git is saying, a smartphone whipped out and taking pictures all around John's feet. "The events the brother described is entirely incongruent to the paint splatters on Mr. Summer's clothes and boots. And the shade mentioned on the paint can. Slightly different from those splashed on him. Conclusion: another shade of green and the brother is lying. But what else is he lying about, that's the question isn't it? Oh yes, this is starting to get fun!"

John gapes at the man, who finally seems to realize there's a human being whom he just shoved standing in front of him.

"You," he says, looking at John without so much as an apologetic shrug. "I need you to come with me to Bart's morgue immediately. Bring the paint. A man's alibi depends on it."

With that the man whirls dramatically in place, the coat swishing around him for extra effect and walks towards the lotus lady, obviously paying for the can of green paint John picked out. And then he turns back to frown impatiently at John, looking for all the world as though he truly expects John to follow his demented arse to a morgue, carrying  _paint_.

What. The bloody. Fuck.

John stalks forward, paint can in hand (because the crazy stranger did pay for it, John might as well utilize his free paint) and words ready on his lips to give the man a piece of his mind. But Mr. Cheekbones seems to take John's walking towards him as acquiescence because, with another dramatic swirl of his coat, he pushes out of the paint store, clearly confident that John would follow him.

And John, for reasons even he will never be able to understand or explain, does.

(It's only much, much later that he realizes he left his cane behind.)

*

The man is already halfway down the street when John catches up to him, paint can swinging in his hand.

"I am not coming with you carrying a tin of paint to look at dead bodies in a bloody morgue!" John finally huffs out all his outrage in one, falling in stride with the ridiculous lunatic he just followed a paint store out of. A lady passing them by does a double-take in alarm. John mentally reviews the sentence that just came out of his mouth and figures yeah, she is justified.

What is his life, really.

"Body, not plural," the man corrects, as though that is the most important problem with that sentence, before casually asking, "Afghanistan or Iraq?" 

John misses a step and nearly drops the can of paint. "What?"

"I said, Afghanistan or Iraq?" the man repeats impatiently, looking put-upon and for all the world like John is being dense just to torment him.

"Afghanistan," John replies on auto-pilot through numb lips, staring at the man beside him. "How did you -?"

"You're a soldier, recently invalided home from Afghanistan, the reasons behind it traumatic I should think, most likely a gunshot wound. So, shot in action, but not on your leg, no. Your limp - psychosomatic, as your therapist has probably diagnosed, quite correctly I'm afraid, though that should no longer be a problem. You live alone, most likely in one of those tiny bedsits which are frugal and affordable on an army pension and you were buying paint to add a splash of colour, probably hoping to bring some cheer to your less-than-desirable accomodations." He turns a smirk in John's direction. "A failed cause, I'll let you know. Nothing can make a bedsit less dreary."

John's head feels vaguely filled with static, as he listens to this utter stranger sum up the last five months of his life in clipped, precise sentences. He doesn't even notice as the man next to him leads him around a corner, now on the familiar route to Bart's. He doesn't even realize he's still walking without his cane, his leg not troubling him at all.

He's still trying to articulate the million different questions buzzing in his brain when a voice calling his name registers through the static.

"John! John Watson!"

John turns around to see a plump, balding man holding a cup of coffee and grinning at him in delight. It takes a second for John to recognize him.

"Mike?"

"Yeah, Mike Stamford. I got fat, I know," Mike says jovially, coming forwards with a hand extended. John shifts the can of paint to his left hand and extends his right, clasping the warm hand of his old classmate in a half-haze. "What're you doing back in London, then? Last I heard you were abroad with the RAMC, getting shot at."

"I got shot," John replies crisply, with a little less tact that he'd usually have. But he's had a very strange day thus far, after all, he can be excused.

The reason behind his strange day lets out a small noise of understanding beside him and says, "Oh yes, not just a soldier, an army _doctor_. Makes much more sense." Those intelligent eyes are trained on him again. "Must've seen a lot of injuries then? Violent deaths?"

"Yes," John finds himself replying.

"Then one more shouldn't be a problem," the man concludes, sweeping on before them. "I'll see you in the morgue, Dr. Watson. Do bring the paint. Good afternoon, Stamford."

"Good afternoon," Mike calls out to the swiftly striding figure with an amused grin, shaking his head.

"You... you _know_ that man?" John asks, feeling vaguely like he had just come out of a hurricane.

"That's Sherlock Holmes," Mike replies. "World's only Consulting Detective." At John's stunned face, his amused grin widens. "And yeah, he's always like that."

*

John walks down the familiar corridors of Bart's Hospital, vaguely registering the differences between his own days here and now, attention focused on Mike as he details the strange specimen that is Sherlock Holmes.

"He can tell your whole life story just by looking at you," Mike says, shrugging good naturedly. "First time I met him, he deduced everything about my daughter's football injury to my wife's job, just from the pictures on my table and my tie, apparently. It's what he does. He helps the police on a freelance basis, figures out crimes, solves murders, that kinda thing."

John digests that as they push through the familiar doors that lead to the morgue at St. Bart's. 

Sherlock Holmes is inside, sans coat and scarf, crouched over a dead body's legs like a giant observant bird. A petite, mousy-haired woman is hovering around him, wearing a lab coat and clutching a clipboard.

Sherlock looks up when John and Mike walk in. "Ah good, you're here. The paint if you please, Dr. Watson."

"Call me John," John says, extending the paint can. The tall man takes it from him with a quick flicker of a smile, holds his eyes and says, "Sherlock."

John nods and the man moves away, prying open the paint can's lid and aliquoting a droplet on a clean petri dish. He lifts up a pair of boots on a table nearby, taking scrapings of green paint off them as well using a penknife and depositing it beside the droplet.

Sherlock then shuffles towards John and drops unceremoniously to his knees in front of him, scraping away at the paint splattered on John's shoes without so much as a by-your-leave.

John splutters and jumps back in surprise, but Sherlock just offers an annoyed, "Hold _still_ , John" and continues scraping, adding those flakes next to the other two on the petri dish.

Samples acquired, he stands with pleased smirk on his face, and says "Brother has green ladder!" With that cryptic exclamation, he is swirling off towards the doors out the morgue. John can mentally see how the coat would swish around him if he were wearing it.

Right at the entrance, Sherlock pauses with one hand on the door and seems to be thinking about something. He turns and sweeps back in, coming to a stop right in front of John.

"I play the violin when I'm thinking," Sherlock states, apropos of nothing, eyes silver blue now and boring into John's. "Sometimes I don't talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other."

John's thoughts flounder a little before they land on an important bit in the nonsensical jumble of words just directed at him.

"Who said anything about a flatmate?" he demands.

"I did, just now," Sherlock says, giving John a look that says he's being particularly slow. "You obviously hate your current living arrangements and either don't have any family to go to or won't, considering you've stuck to bedsits for this long. I have my eye on a nice little place in Central London, but it's a little above my rent budget. A flatshare is an ideal solution for both of us and between us we should be able to afford it."

With that, he's sweeping out again, saying, "I'll meet you at noon tomorrow, John. The address is 221B Baker Street. Molly, I need your help with some analysis."

The doors swing shut behind him.

The mousy haired woman, who is called Molly apparently, squeaks out a good bye and scurries after the recalcitrant man, leaving behind a blinking John and a smirking Stamford.

*

That night, John lies in bed and stares idly at the rainbow light flickering on his walls, refracted by the crystal bauble resting on his bedside table.

When John finally left Bart's earlier that day, he realized he was still holding a can of paint (which he no longer needed) and was lacking a walking cane (which he very much _should've_ needed). Remembering leaving his cane propped against a wall at the paint store, he headed that way to fetch it, and also perhaps give back the can of green, since he had no use for it anymore. 

The lotus lady kept trying to pay him back, to settle for the returned paint, or get him to pick one of the decorative pieces on display. It wasn't even his money in the first place, since Sherlock paid for it. Finally, in order to appease her, John chose the cheapest crystal bauble he could spot on the shelves and fled from there with his cane, expecting the pain in his leg to flare up again the whole walk home.

It never did.

Once he got back to his bedsit, he went on the internet and looked up Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock's website said that he could identify a software designer by his tie and an airplane pilot by his left thumb. After having his life dissected this morning, John can't completely dismiss those ridiculous claims. 

He also found a few news articles, where Sherlock Holmes was credited with giving a decisive tip that led to Scotland Yard solving a case. John personally thinks it's more likely Sherlock solved their cases for them.

Three hours of research (it was _not_ stalking) occured after that. And now, John is very, very intrigued.

He burrows deeper into his warm sheets, finding a more comfortable position and blinks absently at the ceiling. 

He thinks he really will go meet Sherlock tomorrow at noon and take a look at 221B Baker Street.

It's not like he _has_ to take it. He can always back off and leave if the strange man takes a turn from intriguing to intolerable. And it's not like he even has to be around Sherlock all the time. If the accomodations truly are wonderful, he can just go about his own business and ignore the brilliant madman sharing house with him.

It's fine. It will all be fine. He'll just give it a try and see how things shake out.

That decided, John closes his eyes and lets himself fall into a light doze, which slowly passes into the sweet oblivion of deep sleep.

The crystal bauble on his nightstand throws out multi-coloured shards of light all around him, and John Watson doesn't have a single nightmare that night.

 

**Author's Note:**

> After the hundreds of wonderful fics I've read for this pairing, my humble first contribution to this very, very talented fandom. Hope it wasn't an insipid offering and brought some cheer to you. Thanks for reading! <3


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